Tag: Charles Darwin

Richard Dawkins has one of the best-selling books of all time for a serious piece of scientific writing.

Often labeled “pop science”, The Selfish Gene pulls together the “gene-centered” view of evolution: It is not really individuals being selected for in the competition for life, but their genes. The individual bodies (phenotypes) are simply carrying out the instructions of the genes. This leads most people to a very “competition focused” view of life. But is that all?

We’re all hopefully familiar with this concept: Species evolve over long periods time through a process of heredity, variation, competition, and differential survival.

The mechanism of heredity was invisible to Darwin, but a series of scientists, not without a little argument, had figured it out by the 1970’s: Strands of the protein DNA (“genes”) encoded instructions for the building of physical structures. These genes were passed on to offspring in a particular way – the process of heredity. Advantageous genes were propagated in greater numbers. Disadvantageous genes, vice versa.

The Selfish Gene makes a particular kind of case: Specific gene variants grow in proportion to a gene pool by, on average, creating advantaged physical bodies and brains. The genes do their work through “phenotypes” – the physical representation of their information. As Helena Cronin would put in her book The Ant and the Peacock, “It is the net selective value of a gene's phenotypic effect that determines the fate of the gene.”

This take of the evolutionary process became influential because of the range of hard-to-explain behavior that it illuminated.

Why do we see altruistic behavior? Because copies of genes are present throughout a population, not just in single individuals, and altruism can cause great advantages in those gene variants surviving and thriving. (In other words, genes that cause individuals to sacrifice themselves for other copies of those same genes will tend to thrive.)

Why do we see more altruistic behavior among family members? Because they are closely related, and share more genes!

Many problems seemed to be solved here, and the Selfish Gene model became one for all-time, worth having in your head.

However, buried in the logic of the gene-centered view of evolution is a statistical argument. Gene variants rapidly grow in proportion to the rest of the gene pool because they provide survival advantages in the average environment that the gene will experience over its existence. Thus, advantageous genes “selfishly” dominate their environment before long. It's all about gene competition.

This has led many people, some biologists especially, to view evolution solely through the lens of competition. Unsurprisingly, this also led to some false paradigms about a strictly “dog eat dog” world where unrestricted and ruthless individual competition is deemed “natural”.

But what about cooperation?

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The complex systems researcher Yaneer Bar-Yam argues that not only is the Selfish Gene a limiting concept biologically and possibly wrong mathematically (too complex to address here, but if you want to read about it, check out thesepieces), but that there are more nuanced ways to understand the way competition and cooperation comfortably coexist. Not only that, but Bar-Yam argues that this has implications for optimal team formation.

In his book Making Things Work, Bar-Yam lays out a basic message: Even in the biological world, competition is a limited lens through which to see evolution. There’s always a counterbalance of cooperation.

Counter to the traditional perspective, the basic message of this and the following chapter is that competition and cooperation always coexist. People see them as opposing and incompatible forces. I think that this is a result of an outdated and one-sided understanding of evolution…This is extremely useful in describing nature and society; the basic insight that “what works, works” still holds. It turns out, however, that what works is a combination of competition and cooperation.

Bar-Yam uses the analogy of a sports team which exists in context of a sports league – let’s say the NBA. Through this lens we can see why players, teams, and leagues compete and cooperate. (The obvious analogy is that genes, individuals, and groups compete and cooperate in the biological world.)

In general, when we think about the conflict between cooperation and completion in team sports, we tend to think about the relationships between the players on a team. We care deeply about their willingness to cooperate and we distinguish cooperative “team players” from selfish non-team players, complaining about the latter even when their individual skill is formidable.

The reason we want players to cooperate is so that they can compete better as a team. Cooperation at the level of the individual enables effective competition at the level of the group, and conversely, the competition between teams motivates cooperation between players. There is a constructive relationship between cooperation and competition when they operate at different levels of organization.

The interplay between levels is a kind of evolutionary process where competition at the team level improves the cooperation between players. Just as in biological evolution, in organized team sports there is a process of selection of winners through competition of teams. Over time, the teams will change how they behave; the less successful teams will emulate strategies of teams that are doing well.

At every level then, there is an interplay between cooperation and competition. Players compete for playing time, and yet must be intensively cooperative on the court to compete with other teams. At the next level up, teams compete with each other for victories, and yet must cooperate intensively to sustain a league at all.

They create agreed upon rules, schedule times to play, negotiate television contracts, and so on. This allows the league itself to compete with other leagues for scarce attention from sports fans. And so on, up and down the ladder.

Competition among players, teams, and leagues is certainly a crucial dynamic. But it isn’t all that’s going on: They’re cooperating intensely at every level, because a group of selfish individuals loses to a group of cooperative ones.

And it is the same among biological species. Genes are competing with each other, as are individuals, tribes, and species. Yet at every level, they are also cooperating. The success of the human species is clearly due to its ability to cooperate in large numbers; and yet any student of war can attest to its deadly competitive nature. Similar dynamics are at play with ants, rats, and chimpanzees, among other species of insect and animal. It’s a yin and yang world.

Bar-Yam thinks this has great implications for how to build successful teams.

Teams will improve naturally – in any organization – when they are involved in a competition that is structured to select those teams that are better at cooperation. Winners of a competition become successful models of behavior for less successful teams, who emulate their success by learning their strategies and by selecting and trading team members.

For a business, a society, or any other complex system made up of many individuals, this means that improvement will come when the system’s structure involves a completion that rewards successful groups. The idea here is not a cutthroat competition of teams (or individuals) but a competition with rules that incorporate some cooperative activity with a mutual goal.

Individual competition is important and drives excellence. Yet, as Bar-Yam points out, it’s ultimately not a complete formula. Having teams compete is more effective: You need to harness competition and cooperation at every level. You want groups pulling together, creating emerging effects where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (a recurrent theme throughout nature).

We’ve written quite a bit about the marvelous British naturalist Charles Darwin, who with his Origin of Species created perhaps the most intense intellectual debate in human history, one which continues up to this day.

Darwin’s Origin was a courageous and detailed thought piece on the nature and development of biological species. It's the starting point for nearly all of modern biology.

Charlie Munger thinks Darwin would have placed somewhere in the middle of a good private high school class. He was also in notoriously bad health for most of his adult life and, by his son’s estimation, a terrible sleeper. He really only worked a few hours a day in the many years leading up to the Origin of Species.

Yet his “thinking work” outclassed almost everyone. An incredible story.

In his autobiography, Darwin reflected on this peculiar state of affairs. What was he good at that led to the result? What was he so weak at? Why did he achieve better thinking outcomes? As he put it, his goal was to:

“Try to analyse the mental qualities and the conditions on which my success has depended; though I am aware that no man can do this correctly.”

In studying Darwin ourselves, we hope to better appreciate our own strengths and weaknesses and, not to mention understand the working methods of a “mental overachiever.”

Let's explore what Darwin saw in himself.

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1. He did not have a quick intellect or an ability to follow long, complex, or mathematical reasoning. He may have been a bit hard on himself, but Darwin realized that he wasn't a “5 second insight” type of guy (and let's face it, most of us aren't). His life also proves how little that trait matters if you're aware of it and counter-weight it with other methods.

I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance, Huxley. I am therefore a poor critic: a paper or book, when first read, generally excites my admiration, and it is only after considerable reflection that I perceive the weak points. My power to follow a long and purely abstract train of thought is very limited; and therefore I could never have succeeded with metaphysics or mathematics. My memory is extensive, yet hazy: it suffices to make me cautious by vaguely telling me that I have observed or read something opposed to the conclusion which I am drawing, or on the other hand in favour of it; and after a time I can generally recollect where to search for my authority. So poor in one sense is my memory, that I have never been able to remember for more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry.

2. He did not feel easily able to write clearly and concisely. He compensated by getting things down quickly and then coming back to them later, thinking them through again and again. Slow, methodical….and ridiculously effective: For those who haven't read it, the Origin of Species is extremely readable and clear, even now, 150 years later.

I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others.

There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement or proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately.

3. He forced himself to be an incredibly effective and organized collector of information. Darwin's system of reading and indexing facts in large portfolios is worth emulating, as is the habit of taking down conflicting ideas immediately.

As in several of my books facts observed by others have been very extensively used, and as I have always had several quite distinct subjects in hand at the same time, I may mention that I keep from thirty to forty large portfolios, in cabinets with labelled shelves, into which I can at once put a detached reference or memorandum. I have bought many books, and at their ends I make an index of all the facts that concern my work; or, if the book is not my own, write out a separate abstract, and of such abstracts I have a large drawer full. Before beginning on any subject I look to all the short indexes and make a general and classified index, and by taking the one or more proper portfolios I have all the information collected during my life ready for use.

4. He had possibly the most valuable trait in any sort of thinker: A passionate interest in understanding reality and putting it in useful order in his head. This “Reality Orientation” is hard to measure and certainly does not show up on IQ tests, but probably determines, to some extent, success in life.

On the favourable side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully. My industry has been nearly as great as it could have been in the observation and collection of facts. What is far more important, my love of natural science has been steady and ardent.

This pure love has, however, been much aided by the ambition to be esteemed by my fellow naturalists. From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed,–that is, to group all facts under some general laws. These causes combined have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over any unexplained problem. As far as I can judge, I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men. I have steadily endeavoured to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.

Indeed, I have had no choice but to act in this manner, for with the exception of the Coral Reefs, I cannot remember a single first-formed hypothesis which had not after a time to be given up or greatly modified. This has naturally led me to distrust greatly deductive reasoning in the mixed sciences. On the other hand, I am not very sceptical—a frame of mind which I believe to be injurious to the progress of science. A good deal of scepticism in a scientific man is advisable to avoid much loss of time, but I have met with not a few men, who, I feel sure, have often thus been deterred from experiment or observations, which would have proved directly or indirectly serviceable.

[…]

Therefore my success as a man of science, whatever this may have amounted to, has been determined, as far as I can judge, by complex and diversified mental qualities and conditions. Of these, the most important have been—the love of science—unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject—industry in observing and collecting facts—and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense.

5. Most inspirational to us of average intellect, he outperformed his own mental aptitude with these good habits, surprising even himself with the results.

With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points.

There's a bit of a problem we're seeing though: People are reading the stuff, enjoying it, agreeing with it…but not taking action. It's not becoming part of their standard repertoire.

Let's say you followed up on Bayesian thinking after reading our post on it — you spent some time soaking in Thomas Bayes‘ great wisdom on updating your understanding of the world incrementally and probabilistically rather than changing your mind in black-and-white. Great!

But a week later, what have you done with that knowledge? How has it actually impacted your life? If the honest answer is “It hasn't,” then haven't you really wasted your time?

Ironically, it's this habit of “going halfway” instead of “going all the way,” like Sisyphus constantly getting halfway up the mountain, which is the biggest waste of time!

See, the common reason why people don't truly “follow through” with all of this stuff is that they haven't raised their knowledge to a “deep fluency” — they're skimming the surface. They pick up bits and pieces — some heuristics or biases here, a little physics or biology there, and then call it a day and pull up Netflix. They get a little understanding, but not that much, and certainly no doing.

The better approach, if you actually care about making changes, is to imitate Charlie Munger, Charles Darwin, and Richard Feynman, and start raising your knowledge of the Big Ideas to a deep fluency, and then figuring out systems, processes, and mental tricks to implement them in your own life.

Let's work through an example.

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Say you're just starting to explore all the wonderful literature on heuristics and biases and come across the idea of Confirmation Bias: The idea that once we've landed on an idea we really like, we tend to keep looking for further data to confirm our already-held notions rather than trying to disprove our idea.

This is common, widespread, and perfectly natural. We all do it. John Kenneth Galbraith put it best:

“In the choice between changing one's mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.”

Now, what most people do, the ones you're trying to outperform, is say “Great idea! Thanks Galbraith.” and then stop thinking about it.

Don't do that!

The next step would be to push a bit further, to get beyond the sound bite: What's the process that leads to confirmation bias? Why do I seek confirmatory information and in which contexts am I particularly susceptible? What other models are related to the confirmation bias? How do I solve the problem?

The big question: How far do you go? A good question without a perfect answer. But the best test I can think of is to perform something like the Feynman technique, and to think about the chauffeur problem.

Can you explain it simply to an intelligent layperson, using vivid examples? Can you answer all the follow-ups? That's fluency. And you must be careful not to fool yourself, because in the wise words of Feynman, “…you are the easiest person to fool.“

While that's great work, you're not done yet. You have to make the rubber hit the road now. Something has to happen in your life and mind.

The way to do that is to come up with rules, systems, parables, and processes of your own, or to copy someone else's that are obviously sound.

In the case of Confirmation Bias, we have two wonderful models to copy, one from each of the Charlies — Darwin, and Munger.

Darwin had rule, one we have written about before but will restate here: Make a note, immediately, if you come across a thought or idea that is contrary to something you currently believe.

As for Munger, he implemented a rule in his own life: “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”

Now we're getting somewhere! With the implementation of those two habits and some well-earned deep fluency, you can immediately, tomorrow, start improving the quality of your decision-making.

Sometimes when we get outside the heuristic/biases stuff, it's less obvious how to make the “rubber hit the road” — and that will be a constant challenge for you as you take this path.

But that's also the fun part! With every new idea and model you pick up, you also pick up the opportunity to synthesize for yourself a useful little parable to make it stick or a new habit that will help you use it. Over time, you'll come up with hundreds of them, and people might even look to you when they're having problems doing it themselves!

Look at Buffett and Munger — both guys are absolute machines, chock full of pithy little rules and stories they use in order to implement and recall what they've learned.

For example, Buffett discovered early on the manipulative psychology behind open-outcry auctions. What did he do? He made a rule to never go to one!That's how it's done.

Even if you can't come up with a great rule like that, you can figure out a way to use any new model or idea you learn. It just takes some creative thinking.

Sometimes it's just a little mental rule or story that sticks particularly well. (Recall one of the prime lessons from our series on memory: Salient, often used, well-associated, and important information sticks best.)

We did this very thing recently with Lee Kuan Yew's Rule. What a trite way to refer to the simple idea of asking if something actually works…attributing it to a Singaporean political leader!

But that's exactly the point. Give the thing a name and a life and, like clockwork, you'll start recalling it. The phrase “Lee Kuan Yew's Rule” actually appears in my head when I'm approaching some new system or ideology, and as soon as it does, I find myself backing away from ideology and towards pragmatism. Exactly as I'd hoped.

Your goal should be to create about a thousand of those little tools in your head, attached to a deep fluency in the material from which it came.

***

I can hear the objection coming. Who has time for this stuff?

You do. It's about making time for the things that really matter. And what could possibly matter more than upgrading your whole mental operating system?I solemnly promise that you're spending way more time right now making sub-optimal decisions and trying to deal with the fallout.

If you need help learning to manage your time right this second, check out our Productivity Seminar, one that's changed some people's lives entirely. The central idea is to become more thoughtful and deliberate with how you spend your hours. When you start doing that, you'll notice you do have an hour a day to spend on this Big Ideas stuff. It's worth the 59 bucks.

If you don't have 59 bucks, at least imitate Cal Newport and start scheduling your days and put an hour in there for “Getting better at making all of my decisions.”

Once you find that solid hour (or more), start using it in the way outlined above, and let the world's great knowledge actually start making an impact. Just do a little every day.

What you'll notice, over the weeks and months and years of doing this, is that your mind will really change! It has to! And with that, your life will change too. The only way to fail at improving your brain is by imitating Sisyphus, pushing the boulder halfway up, over and over.

Unless and until you really understand this, you'll continue spinning your wheels. So here's your call to action. Go get to it!

“You know what Kipling said? Treat those two impostors just the same — success and failure. Of course, there’s going to be some failure in making the correct decisions. Nobody bats a thousand. I think it’s important to review your past stupidities so you are less likely to repeat them, but I’m not gnashing my teeth over it or suffering or enduring it. I regard it as perfectly normal to fail and make bad decisions. I think the tragedy in life is to be so timid that you don’t play hard enough so you have some reverses.”
— Charlie Munger

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When was the last time you said to yourself I hope I’m wrong and really meant it?

Have you ever really meant it?

Here’s the thing: In our search for truth we must realize, thinking along two tracks, that we’re frequently led to wrong solutions by the workings of our natural apparatus. Uncertainty is a very mentally demanding, and in a certain way, physically demanding process. The brain uses a lot of energy when it has to process conflicting information. To show yourself, try reading up on something contentious like the abortion debate, but with a completely open mind to either side (if you can). Pay attention as your brain starts twisting itself into a very uncomfortable state while you explore completely opposing sides of an argument.

This mental pain is called cognitive dissonance and it's really not that much fun. Charlie Munger calls the process of resolving this dissonance doubt avoidance tendency – the tendency to resolve conflicting information as quickly as possible to return to physical and mental comfort. To get back to your happy zone.

Combine this tendency to resolve doubt with the well-known first conclusion bias (something Francis Bacon knew about long ago), and the logical conclusion is that we land on a lot of wrong answers and stay there because it’s easier.

Let that sink in. We don’t stay there because we’re correct, but because it’s physically easier. It's a form of laziness.

Don’t believe me? Spend a single day asking yourself this simple question: Do I know this for sure, or have I simply landed on a comfortable spot?

You’ll be surprised how many things you do and believe just because it’s easy. You might not even know how you landed there. Don’t feel bad about it — it’s as natural as breathing. You were wired that way at birth.

But there is a way to attack this problem.

Munger has a dictum that he won’t allow himself to hold an opinion unless he knows the other side of the argument better than that side does. Such an unforgiving approach means that he’s not often wrong. (It sometimes takes many years to show, but posterity has rarely shown him to be way off.) It’s a tough, wise, and correct solution.

It’s still hard though, and doesn’t solve the energy expenditure problem. What can we tell ourselves to encourage ourselves to do that kind of work? The answer would be well-known to Darwin: Train yourself to be eager to be wrong.

Right to be Wrong

The advice isn't simply to be open to being wrong, which you’ve probably been told to do your whole life. That’s nice, and correct in theory, but frequently turns into empty words on a page. Simply being open to being wrong allows you to keep the window cracked when confronted with disconfirming evidence — to say Well, I was open to it! and keep on with your old conclusion.

Eagerness implies something more. Eager implies that you actively hope there is real, true, disconfirming information proving you wrong. It implies you’d be more than glad to find it. It implies that you might even go looking for it. And most importantly, it implies that when you do find yourself in error, you don’t need to feel bad about it. You feel great about it! Imagine how much of the world this unlocks for you.

Why be so eager to prove yourself wrong? Well, do you want to be comfortable or find the truth? Do you want to say you understand the world or do you want to actually understand it? If you’re a truth seeker, you want reality the way it is, so you can live in harmony with it.

Feynman wanted reality. Darwin wanted reality. Einstein wanted reality. Even when they didn’t like it. The way to stand on the shoulders of giants is to start the day by telling yourself I can't wait to correct my bad ideas, because then I’ll be one step closer to reality.

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Post-script: Make sure you apply this advice to things that matter. As stated above, resolving uncertainty takes great energy. Don’t waste that energy on deciding whether Nike or Reebok sneakers are better. They’re both fine. Pick the ones that feel comfortable and move on. Save your deep introspection for the stuff that matters.

It's not immediately clear, to the layman, what the essential difference is between science and something masquerading as science: pseudoscience. The distinction gets at the core of what comprises human knowledge: How do we actually know something to be true? Is it simply because our powers of observation tell us so? Or is there more to it?

Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994), the scientific philosopher, was interested in the same problem. How do we actually define the scientific process? How do we know which theories can be said to be truly explanatory?

When I received the list of participants in this course and realized that I had been asked to speak to philosophical colleagues I thought, after some hesitation and consultation, that you would probably prefer me to speak about those problems which interest me most, and about those developments with which I am most intimately acquainted. I therefore decided to do what I have never done before: to give you a report on my own work in the philosophy of science, since the autumn of 1919 when I first began to grapple with the problem, ‘When should a theory be ranked as scientific?' or ‘Is there a criterion for the scientific character or status of a theory?'

Popper saw a problem with the number of theories he considered non-scientific that, on their surface, seemed to have a lot in common with good, hard, rigorous science.But the question of how we decide which theories are compatible with the scientific method, and those which are not, was harder than it seemed.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.

This is a popularly accepted notion. We observe, observe, and observe, and we look for theories to best explain the mass of facts. (Although even this is not really true: Popper points out that we must start with some a priori knowledge to be able to generate new knowledge. Observation is always done with some hypotheses in mind–we can't understand the world from a totally blank slate. More on that another time.)

The problem, as Popper saw it, is that some bodies of knowledge more properly named pseudosciences would be considered scientific if the “Observe & Deduce” operating definition were left alone. For example, a believing astrologist can ably provide you with “evidence” that their theories are sound. The biographical information of a great many people can be explained this way, they'd say.

The astrologist would tell you, for example, about how “Leos” seek to be the centre of attention; ambitious, strong, seeking the limelight. As proof, they might follow up with a host of real-life Leos: World-leaders, celebrities, politicians, and so on. In some sense, the theory would hold up. The observations could be explained by the theory, which is how science works, right?

Sir Karl ran into this problem in a concrete way because he lived during a time when psychoanalytic theories were all the rage at just the same time Einstein was laying out a new foundation for the physical sciences with the concept of relativity. What made Popper uncomfortable were comparisons between the two. Why did he feel so uneasy putting Marxist theories and Freudian psychology in the same category of knowledge as Einstein's Relativity? Did all three not have vast explanatory power in the world? Each theory's proponents certainly believed so, but Popper was not satisfied.

It was during the summer of 1919 that I began to feel more and more dissatisfied with these three theories–the Marxist theory of history, psychoanalysis, and individual psychology; and I began to feel dubious about their claims to scientific status. My problem perhaps first took the simple form, ‘What is wrong with Marxism, psycho-analysis, and individual psychology? Why are they so different from physical theories, from Newton's theory, and especially from the theory of relativity?'

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory.

Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still ‘un-analysed' and crying aloud for treatment.

Here was the salient problem: The proponents of these new sciences saw validations and verifications of their theories everywhere. If you were having trouble as an adult, it could always be explained by something your mother or father had done to you when you were young, some repressed something-or-other that hadn't been analysed and solved. They were confirmation bias machines.

What was the missing element? Popper had figured it out before long: The non-scientific theories could not be falsified. They were not testable in a legitimate way. There was no possible objection that could be raised which would show the theory to be wrong.

In a true science, the following statement can be easily made: “If x happens, it would show demonstrably that theory y is not true.” We can then design an experiment, a physical one or sometimes a simple thought experiment, to figure out if x actually does happen. It's the opposite of looking for verification; you must try to show the theory is incorrect, and if you fail to do so, thereby strengthen it.

Pseudosciences cannot and do not do this–they are not strong enough to hold up. As an example, Popper discussed Freud's theories of the mind in relation to Alfred Adler's so-called “individual psychology,” which was popular at the time:

I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning it; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and in Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact–that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed–which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

Popper contrasted these theories against Relativity, which made specific, verifiable predictions, giving the conditions under which the predictions could be shown false. It turned out that Einstein's predictions came to be true when tested, thus verifying the theory through attempts to falsify it. But the essential nature of the theory gave grounds under which it could have been wrong. To this day, physicists seek to figure out where Relativity breaks down in order to come to a more fundamental understanding of physical reality. And while the theory may eventually be proven incomplete or a special case of a more general phenomenon, it has still made accurate, testable predictions that have led to practical breakthroughs.

Thus, in Popper's words, science requires testability: “If observation shows that the predicted effect is definitely absent, then the theory is simply refuted.” This means a good theory must have an element of risk to it. It must be able to be proven wrong under stated conditions.

From there, Popper laid out his essential conclusions, which are useful to any thinker trying to figure out if a theory they hold dear is something that can be put in the scientific realm:

1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory–if we look for confirmations.

2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory–an event which would have refuted the theory.

3. Every ‘good' scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.

4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.

5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.

6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of ‘corroborating evidence'.)

7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers–for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by re-interpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a ‘conventionalist twist' or a ‘conventionalist stratagem'.)

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Finally, Popper was careful to say that it is not possible to prove that Freudianism was nottrue, at least in part. But we can say that we simply don't know whether it's true because it does not make specific testable predictions. It may have many kernels of truth in it, but we can't tell. The theory would have to be restated.

This is the essential “line ofdemarcation,“ as Popper called it, between science and pseudoscience.

“It is important to understand that none of these replicating entities is consciously interested in getting itself duplicated. But it will just happen that the world becomes filled with replicators that are more efficient.”

***

In 1859, Charles Darwin first described his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Origin of Species. Here we are, 157 years later, and although it has become an established fact in the field of biology, its beauty is still not that well understood among the populace. I think that's because it's slightly counter-intuitive. Unlike string theory or quantum mechanics, the theory of evolution through natural selection is pretty easily obtainable by most.

So, is there a way we can help ourselves understand the theory in an intuitive way, so we can better go on applying it to other domains? I think so, and it comes from an interesting little volume released in 1995 by the biologist Richard Dawkins called River Out of Eden. But first, let's briefly head back to the Origin of Species, so we're clear on what we're trying to understand.

***

In the fourth chapter of the book, entitled “Natural Selection,” Darwin describes a somewhat cold and mechanistic process for the development of species: If species had heritable traits and variation within their population, they would survive in different numbers, and those most adapted to survival would thrive and pass on those traits to successive generations. Eventually, new species would arise, slowly, as enough variation and differential reproduction acted on the population to create a de facto branch in the family tree.

Here's the original description.

Let it be borne in mind how infinitely complex and close-fitting are the mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life. Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.

[…]

In such case, every slight modification, which in the course of ages chanced to arise, and which in any way favored the individuals of any species, by better adapting them to their altered conditions, would tend to be preserved; and natural selection would thus have free scope for the work of improvement.

[…]

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejection that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

The beauty of the theory is in its simplicity. The mechanism of evolution is, at root, a simple one. An unguided one. Better descendants outperform lesser ones in a competitive world and are more successful at replicating. Traits that improve the survival of their holder in its current environment tend to be preserved and amplified over time. This is hard to see in real time, although some examples are helpful in understanding the concept, e.g. antibiotic resistance.

Darwin's idea didn't take as quickly as we might like to think. In The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, David Quammen talks about the period after the release of the groundbreaking work, in which the world had trouble coming to grips with Darwin's theory. It was not the case, as it might seem today, that the world simply threw up its hands and accepted Darwin as a genius. This is a lesson in and of itself. It was quite the contrary:

By the 1890s, natural selection as Darwin had defined it–that is, differential reproductive success resulting from small, undirected variations and serving as the chief mechanism of adaption and divergence–was considered by many evolutionary biologists to have been a wrong guess.

It wasn't until Gregor Mendel's peas showed how heritability worked that Darwin's ideas were truly vindicated against his rivals'. So if we have trouble coming to terms with evolution by natural selection in the modern age, we're not alone: So did Darwin's peers.

***

What's this all got to do with chain letters? Well, in Dawkins' River Out of Eden, he provides an analogy for the process of evolution through natural selection that is quite intuitive, and helpful in understanding the simple power of the idea. How would a certain type of chain letter come to dominate the population of all chain letters? It would work the same way.

A simple example is the so-called chain letter. You receive in the mail a postcard on which is written: “Make six copies of this card and send them to six friends within a week. If you do not do this, a spell will be cast upon you and you will die in horrible agony within a month.” If you are sensible you will throw it away. But a good percentage of people are not sensible; they are vaguely intrigued, or intimidated by the threat, and send six copies of it to other people. Of these six, perhaps two will be persuaded to send it on to six other people. If, on average, 1/3 of the people who receive the card obey the instructions written on it, the number of cards in circulation will double every week. In theory, this means that the number of cards in circulation after one year will be 2 to the power of 52, or about four thousand trillion. Enough post cards to smother every man, woman, and child in the world.

Exponential growth, if not checked by the lack of resources, always leads to startlingly large-scale results in a surprisingly short time. In practice, resources are limited and other factors, too, serve to limit exponential growth. In our hypothetical example, individuals will probably start to balk when the same chain letter comes around to them for the second time. In the competition for resources, variants of the same replicator may arise that happen to be more efficient at getting themselves duplicated. These more efficient replicators will tend to displace their less efficient rivals. It is important to understand that none of these replicating entities is consciously interested in getting itself duplicated. But it will just happen that the world becomes filled with replicators that are more efficient.

In the case of the chain letter, being efficient may consist in accumulating a better collection of words on the paper. Instead of the somewhat implausible statement that “if you don't obey the words on the card you will die in horrible agony within a month,” the message might change to “Please, I beg of you, to save your soul and mine, don't take the risk: if you have the slightest doubt, obey the instructions and send the letter to six more people.”

Such “mutations” happen again and again, and the result will eventually be a heterogenous population of messages all in circulation, all descended from the same original ancestor but differing in detailed wording and in the strength and nature of the blandishments they employ. The variants that are more successful will increase in frequency at the expense of less successful rivals. Success is simply synonymous with frequency in circulation.

The chain letter contains all of the elements of biological natural selection except one: Someone had to write the first chain letter. The first replicating biological entity, on the other hand, seems to have sprung up from an early chemical brew.

Consider this analogy an intermediate mental “step” towards the final goal. Because we know and appreciate the power of reasoning by analogy and metaphor, we can deduce that finding an appropriate analogy is one of the best ways to pound an idea into your head–assuming it is a correct idea that should be pounded in.

And because evolution through natural selection is one of the more powerful ideas a human being has ever had, it seems worth our time to pound this one in for good and start applying it elsewhere if possible. (For example, Munger has talked about how business evolves in a manner such that competitive results are frequently similar to biological outcomes.)

Read Dawkins' book in full for a deeper look at his views on replication and natural selection. It's shorter than some of his other works, but worth the time.